


Because I Know Death So Well

by evadne



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Once Upon a Time (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Femslash, Mild Knifeplay, mild bloodplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 19:47:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evadne/pseuds/evadne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both have good reason to find fear in this. And good reason, too, to do it anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Because I Know Death So Well

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [femslash_today Porn Battle](http://femslash-today.livejournal.com/567840.html), for the prompt: OUAT/MCU crossover, Natasha/Ruby, sharp.

‘Try again,’ Natasha says, gritting her teeth.  
  
‘I don’t want to hurt you –‘  
  
‘Yes, you do, and I want it too, so _try again_.’  
  
Natasha is sitting on the bed, legs coiled under her, jeans on but top and bra off. Ruby, naked, stands over her, fingers gripping the knife handle. She lowers the knife slowly, aiming for the place on Natasha’s left shoulder they agreed on beforehand.  
  
And, once again, Natasha flinches back. She catches herself mid-flinch, sighs, and tips her head back. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Usually people who come at me with knives are trying to kill me, not - takes some adjusting.’  
  
Ruby bites her lip, and sits down on the bed next to her, leans in, letting her hair tumble over Natasha’s back. ‘There are so many other things we can do,’ she says.  
  
‘I do want this, though,’ Natasha says, and her heart twists and shakes as she says it. ‘I - think about claws, sometimes. And teeth. White ones, sharp, catching the light. And blood on skin and blood trickling between words on a page.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m talking like your people now,’ she says.  
  
‘You can’t blame that on me. I don’t even talk like my people.’ Ruby pauses, then adds, ‘Hardly any of us do, in this world. Most of us are scared of storytelling, to be honest.’  
  
‘Sensible,’ Natasha says, letting herself move just a little closer to Ruby. Her body is warm and receptive, inviting Natasha to fold against it, and there seems little reason, actually, not to do so.  Ruby’s still holding the knife, and it draws Natasha’s gaze irresistibly. She touches the flat of it, lets her finger slide down it, reflected in its smooth glinting plane.  
  
‘The trouble is,’ she says, ‘I could get used to it, if we keep practicing. But frankly the instinct to get out of the way when a knife heads towards me is one that has served me pretty well. I’m not sure I should be trying to lose it.’  
  
Ruby looks oddly pained at that. ‘No,’ she says. ‘That’s not what we’re doing. If you think that’s – the idea is that you don’t flinch when it’s _me_.’  
  
‘Ah,’ Natasha says. Yes, that makes sense. She’s been here before. A rooftop in Budapest, a cold battlefield, flames licking up the walls of a towering tumbledown house. The same decision to be made over and over again in a dozen different guises. It would be much easier to make a final call on it, to say _no_ , _enough, this never ends well, they can have nothing._ Instead of endlessly calibrating and recalculating: _how much of myself can I spare, what can I risk letting in?_  
  
And now, Ruby. Ruby with her soft full lips and wide guileless eyes and red nails and red-streaked hair. For a moment, Natasha feels terribly old, then she collects herself, and closes her mouth over Ruby’s, lips parting and sliding together.  
  
Then, still kissing, she reaches for Ruby’s hand, the one locked around the knife, curls her own about it, and guides it to her shoulder. Ruby’s hand is gripping so hard her knuckles are white, but her arm is limp, and she lets Natasha direct her, lets Natasha be the one to apply pressure. Together they watch the tiny cut appear, the blood welling up.  
  
And oh, yes. Hypothesis very much proven. A pulse of warmth between her legs, as if responding to the gentle throbbing of the cut. Natasha takes the knife from Ruby and drops it on the bedside table, then twists on the bed to face her. Ruby is smiling, extraordinarily beautiful and it’s been so _long_ –  
  
She is hot all over when Natasha reaches for her, cups a hand over her breast and runs the thumb of her other hand down across her clit, a light brush, no more than a tease. Ruby’s gasp is small, the distance her legs slide apart minute. Natasha does it again, and the distance increases a little.  
  
Her pulse is irregular and too fast, she wants to kiss every inch of Ruby’s skin and bite her red mouth, wants to run and hide. She’s been here before too, hands intimately engaged with someone’s body and heart leaning in despite itself, and it never – ever –  
  
Natasha’s brain is drenched in words, she’s been thinking in English for years now and there are  English words for this that are comfortingly ancient. So it’s Ruby’s cunt that she slides a finger into now, and fucking is what she does with it, in and out, and no words at all are necessary for the choked-off whimpering sounds Ruby makes, fist in mouth and knuckles whiter than ever.  
  
And Ruby is afraid, which makes Natasha’s own blood-pounding awareness of the world closing in on them easier to deal with. Because Ruby, too, knows what it is to be unmade. To remake yourself with whatever’s left afterwards and to know that who you are can never and should never be who you were. Ruby knows what it is to forget and what it is to remember, and to catch yourself wishing, sometimes, that you could forget again. And to choose, over and over, to keep remembering. She _knows_ , so of course she’s afraid, because  bared skin and chemical rushes and entwined hands are poison to control and Ruby also knows what it is to find claws you never knew you had and never wanted and learn to use them –  
  
‘Nails,’ Natasha says, her voice coming out ragged, and Ruby’s red pointed nails rake down her arms. Gently at first, but Natasha presses on Ruby’s hands and she gets the hint, does it again hard enough to draw traces of blood. Natasha scrapes teeth across Ruby’s neck, slides a second finger into Ruby’s body alongside the first. Heat and dark and _inside_ , inside somebody else, she doubts that will ever stop being good enough to hurt. Like Ruby’s fear. Like her own.  
  
‘Fuck me,’ Ruby begs, just as Natasha says, ‘ _Hurt_ me Ruby, _please_ ,’ and they both breathe heavier at that, like they’re running from something, and Natasha moves her fingers at a punishing pace and Ruby scratches again even harder, little dots of blood appearing at the ends of each line. Control is fading, Natasha knows where it is for when she wants it but perhaps she can leave it there just for a moment.  
  
She moves nearer, leans right forward, using her free hand to steady herself, and kisses Ruby as viciously as she dares, messy, too many teeth, but Ruby’s moaning a little now, still quiet, though less now that the fist she had in her mouth is flung out clutching at the sheets. Natasha kisses Ruby and Red and the wolf and wonders if one day she might let Ruby kiss Natalie or Natalia or Black Widow. She feels the shape of stories in her mouth, hidden sharp edges and all, and holds them there, tastes them, wanting everything of Ruby she can have.  
  
And her body and mind are gloriously one the way they only ever are in combat or mortal fear, but this is more than that, and so she takes a breath and strips off her jeans and underwear, drops them to the floor with barely a shred of anxiety. Pulls herself flush against Ruby and pulls her fingers out of Ruby’s cunt (a whine of protest, almost of loss, that sends another pulse rushing through her) and pushes her knee inelegantly into Ruby’s crotch instead.  
  
‘Brutal, but – ‘ she says, and doesn’t need to finish the thought because Ruby’s grinding herself against Natasha’s knee with utter abandon, beyond caring and perhaps even beyond fear now, or so immersed in fear it no longer matters. Natasha rocks herself against Ruby’s leg, pressure over and over again where she’s desperate for it, clit thrumming with the sudden influx of sensation. She’s silent but not still, hands opening and closing, seeking a stability that’s nowhere to be found and not remotely desired.  
  
And Ruby’s taking initiative now, hands coming to bury themselves in Natasha’s hair and then tug at it, tentative at first and then more violent, almost pulling back her head, and Natasha does let out a loud exhale at that, a sound that has Ruby more beautiful than ever in her triumphant smile. ‘Yes, yes,’ one of them is saying, or possibly they both are, caught as they are in the same rhythm, tipping into each other, using each other’s bodies for friction and pleasure and yes, something else, something it’s best not to think about now.  
  
‘Oh, I’m –‘ Ruby says, and Natasha slips a finger between their bodies and rubs at Ruby’s clit as Ruby comes, repeating _oh_ and _yes_ and untranslatable but entirely comprehensible moans. And that, that is all Natasha can take, she grabs Ruby’s shoulders and digs in her hands and thrusts her whole body against Ruby’s leg, rubbing herself against it, control gone and barely held together enough to care, the world hard and hot and made of pressure and need.  
  
She lets her eyes fall on Ruby’s face, which is flushed, and her lips are swollen and her hair is everywhere, and as Natasha watches she leans right forward and kisses the cut on her shoulder. Then sucks. And the pain is nothing, the slight sting negligible in any other context, but here it’s like a stab wound to every neurotransmitter in her body and every nerve in her head, and she makes no sound at all as she comes and comes and comes.  
  
There’s no time left to wring a second orgasm from Ruby, though she’d very much like to see it. Instead, she lets herself become a soft heap over her for forty seconds. Ruby’s body is warmer, needier than ever, the slight sheen of sweat on her skin and her eyelashes draped softly over her shut eyes. And skin on still skin is a lovely thing to feel. Just for a moment.  
  
Then Natasha gets up, cleans her wounds, and puts her clothes back on. Ruby watches her and doesn’t comment, just smiles, the smallest smile Natsha’s seen from her yet. Because she knows, doesn’t she? That stories are double-edged and a shield of any kind can only provide so much protection at once. That the appearances of things are deceptive and everything is exactly what it seems, for a given value of _is_. That daring to have anything, when so much has been lost, is only bearable through a fine precise web of knowledge and control.  
  
Once dressed, Natasha looks to the door, then comes back to bed instead, folds herself back over Ruby’s naked cooling body. ‘Just another minute,’ she says. ‘We’ve got a meeting with the others.’  
  
‘I know,’ Ruby says. And she does. ‘Let’s be five minutes late.’  
  
‘Three and a half minutes,’ Natasha says. She doesn’t smile: it’s funnier that way. Which isn’t to say she doesn’t mean it.  
  
Ruby giggles. ‘Yeah, fine,’ she says. ‘We’ll make it five next time.’  
  
Fear again, deeper, hollower, filling up the spaces inside her body. She knows what she’s being asked. The world is opening up beneath her, but she knows she’s already made her choice. What happens next will be about managing the consequences. So she tilts her head in very close to Ruby’s ear, and gently kisses the skin beneath it, and whispers, ‘Yes. All right. Yes.’   
  
Ruby tips her own head to kiss Natasha’s neck. The weight of lips on skin, and beneath them, even white teeth. Natasha knows better than to reference fairy tales out loud in front of Ruby, but she can’t help thinking of forests, and lies, of unconventional seductions and people eaten alive and the world that waits for those who step off the path.  
  
She touches the scratches on her arm with one fingertip and closes her eyes. Two minutes and fifty seconds left. Time, still, to kiss Ruby, taste her own blood on Ruby’s tongue. Time for fear. For things it’s better not to name. Time to take stock of her newest debts. Two minutes and thirty seconds.  
  
She opens her eyes, tilts her head again, and, for the duration of one kiss, she doesn't count seconds at all.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a Natasha quote - 'Because I know death so well, I know how supremely precious life is' - in Marvel Team-Up #85, which, full disclosure, I haven't read. I got the quote, instead, from the wonderful fuckyeahblackwidow tumblr. [Further context can be found there.](http://fuckyeahblackwidow.tumblr.com/post/58526221053/natasha-you-speak-so-casually-of-death-viper-i)


End file.
